As part of the project, we carried out a sample exercise looking at three 10km squares in Devon, Durham and Somerset. Kieron Byrne of
EH provided data from the NRHE and Graham Tait, Nick Boldrini and I compared these to HER data.
The headline figures (for monuments) are in the table below:
|
|
Devon
|
Durham
|
Somerset
|
|
HER entries
|
1275
|
353
|
595
|
|
NRHE entries
|
144 (all mapped)
|
180 (171 mapped)
|
328 (317 mapped)
|
|
Cross referenced
|
97 (7.6% of HER)
|
78 (22% of HER)
|
203 (34% of HER)
|
|
Can be linked
|
35
|
>16
|
295
|
|
New to HER
|
12 (1%)
|
<77 (22%)
|
42 (7%)
|
As you will see, there is a great deal of overlap, with only a few new-to-the-HER sites in the NRHE. This is possibly the worst case
as there is a lot of work to identify which sites they are, and then not a great number of new sites. That said, each matched site has to be assessed to check if it has information
additional to that in the HER (see below).
In terms of time, it took me about half a day to assess the 10km Somerset square.
There is quite a bit of difference between the HERs as well, as the first line reveals. Kieron tells me that the NRHE
averages 330 sites per 10km square over England so that might help to assess your area. All our sample areas were below the NRHE average so there are a lot of other sites somewhere (Wiltshire?)
We also looked at Events. Again there appeared to be more in the HERs but Martin Newman pointed out that there are also building recording
events in NHRE (which we didn’t include).
Finally, I took a random sample of 10% of the NHRE sites in the Somerset square and assessed them for additional information that would
need to be added to the HER.
Of the 32 records:
20 had nothing to add to the HER
5 were identical (NMP)
4 were new sites (all unlisted buildings)
2 had some additional information
1 was a mistaken entry in the NRHE (more recent information would have deleted it).
I’ve more detailed information – but this post is long enough already.
Chris Webster
Somerset Historic Environment Record
Somerset Heritage Centre
Brunel Way
Taunton
TA2 6SF
01823 347434
Online HER at
www.somerset.gov.uk/her
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